Considering a NPT

[pittipuppylove]

Hi all!

As the title says, I'm considering trying a NPT for one of my betta tanks - in particular, the tank I take care of at my mom's vet office. I got permission a couple weeks ago to move him to a 5.5 gallon filtered, planted tank with the idea that it would be easier to care for and the betta would be more interesting to watch. He's currently in this new tank and is a happy little camper (On a side note, the doctors are all amazed that he's so active. It's amazing what warm, clean water and room to swim can do for the morale of a fish). But since I'm three hours away at school most of the time and therefore unable to do regular water changes (another person who's there regularly does them when I'm away, but I'm a bit paranoid that they won't get done), I think it would be very cool to have a tank that needs water changes so infrequently. If I end up changing this tank over to a NPT it'd likely be this coming summer, so I have plenty of time to learn and read up on things.

However, I'm also contemplaiting turning one of the 5.5 gallon tanks in my dorm into a NPT as a sort of "test run" to see if I'd be capable of doing it so that if/when I actually do it at work I have some idea what to expect and I make less of an idiot of myself infront of my bosses and coworkers Thing is, I have to drain all the tanks and move them to/from school a few times a year. Would this fact make any of my tanks poor candidates for NPTs? Do you guys have any advice as to anything I've said so far?

Thanks for any advice and sorry for the long post!
Leah

[aokashi]

If you want fo do a test run, I recommend you to do it with a 1 gallon. I also highly recommend a fine gravel cap. sand is nice, but gravel is much more forgiving. you really dont need to do an NPT to keep up with the water quality. gravel, floaters and stem plants will do just fine.

[pittipuppylove]

Thanks for the reply! A smaller test run does make a lot of sense. Would regular Petco gravel work, or should it be something smaller? I'll look into just using floaters and stem plants too - that may be an easier place to start.
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[aokashi]

I forgot what size petco gravel is. but you want something that is coarser than sand, but fine enough to hold the soil down :)